Keeping Your Business in the U.S.A. (PDF)

Tim Hutzel, past president of MainStream Consulting, is a 45-year veteran of manufacturing management and industrial psychology. His education and life experiences provide him with the unique ability to blend a BS in engineering technology from Miami University (Ohio) with a master's degree in organization development from Bowling Green State University. The joining of these two disciplines piqued his interests to the point where his research and thesis concentrated on Self-Directed Work Teams. Tim has written and implemented several programs on Self-Directed Work Teams including The Design and Implementation of Self-Directed Work Teams, The Daily Management of Self-Directed Work Teams, and The Supervisor's Role in Self-Directed Work Teams. He also developed the Self-Directed Work Team course for the Association for Quality and Participation.

This blend of the "technical" and "organizational" has provided Tim with the advantage of having a radar screen that goes far beyond the normal scope and toolbox of traditional Lean implementers who focus on kaizen or Lean "events." Although trained by the Shingijutsu experts while he worked in Japan, he discovered that the missing link to sustainment of Lean was the need to treat Lean transformation as an organizational development initiative, not simply a series of Lean events in hopes that the organization would eventually "get it." Tim, who was responsible for Lean at GE Aircraft Engines and on the Jack Welch select team to implement Lean across all of GE, recalls, "Whenever we would ask the Japanese what was next after kaizen they never seemed to understand our need to connect the dots organizationally. I now understand why. Kaizen was only one component of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which began with Japan's reconstruction in the late 1940s. TPS and kaizen evolved over 50 years. The organizational aspect of Lean was always in the background with them as Lean evolved; Shingijuts